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czern0b0g · 11:41 PM

dual monitor support isn't just for os 9 anymore:

http://www.rutemoeller.com/mp/ibook/ibook_e.html

so... who's brave?

one guy on xlr8yourmac's forums apparently already broked his ibook...
oh, i am so torn.

edit: (additional thought) but i guess the REAL question/feature-i-am-dying-for is 1280x1024 on the external display (possible with only 16mb split to 2 screens?). oh please oh please oh please. even better would be a way to temporarily shut off the lcd to pump all 16mb to the external display. hmmm...

Eug · Oct 23, 2002, 12:14 AM

I wonder what the command would be for us older iBook 600 owners (with the 8 MB Rage Mobility).

Gatorzx2 · Oct 23, 2002, 01:24 AM

Anyone here try this yet? What is the worse thing that can happen if something goes wrong?

gator · Oct 23, 2002, 02:11 AM

I'd really like to try this, not brave enough though... lol anyone who does it please post your experiences here

sniffer · Oct 23, 2002, 02:23 AM

Couldn't see any pictures proving that it works.. Hmm..

theJeff · Oct 23, 2002, 01:00 PM

Preliminary indicators suggest:

500Mhz Rage 128 iBooks: No Change
600Mhz Rage 128 iBooks: Death
600+Mhz Radeon iBooks: Success

I am the guy from xlr8yourmac's forum who "broked" his iBook. No pain no gain, that's my motto.

Taco · Oct 23, 2002, 03:10 PM

There has to be a way to get the older ibooks, 500, 600 to span, this would so greatly increase the functionality of our books.I know there is a petition to get apple to officially support this,
I could sure use the spanning. Those 700 books have all the fun, quartz extreme, now spanning.. dern dern dern

boardsurfer · Oct 23, 2002, 07:35 PM

ArsTechnica has a thread as well. Some successes and a failure.

FYI

Eug · Oct 23, 2002, 08:38 PM

Originally posted by theJeff:
Preliminary indicators suggest:

500Mhz Rage 128 iBooks: No Change
600Mhz Rage 128 iBooks: Death
600+Mhz Radeon iBooks: Success

I am the guy from xlr8yourmac's forum who "broked" his iBook. No pain no gain, that's my motto.

OK, I will not try it since I have the Rage.

By the way, I assume that a reformat solves the problem?

theJeff · Oct 23, 2002, 09:27 PM

By the way, I assume that a reformat solves the problem?

That would be nice. Unfortunately, "dead" means that the iBook won't boot whatsoever. After the chime there is just nothing. Zapping the PRAM, booting into Open Firmware, booting into the boot manager, booting from a CD; these all become unpossible.

I'm letting my iBook sit for awhile with no battery and no AC power to see if that cures it.

Lateralus · Oct 23, 2002, 10:04 PM

Originally posted by theJeff:

That would be nice. Unfortunately, "dead" means that the iBook won't boot whatsoever. After the chime there is just nothing. Zapping the PRAM, booting into Open Firmware, booting into the boot manager, booting from a CD; these all become unpossible.

I'm letting my iBook sit for awhile with no battery and no AC power to see if that cures it.

Best of luck to you. :-(

flatcatch · 03:29 AM

Originally posted by theJeff:

That would be nice. Unfortunately, "dead" means that the iBook won't boot whatsoever. After the chime there is just nothing. Zapping the PRAM, booting into Open Firmware, booting into the boot manager, booting from a CD; these all become unpossible.

I'm letting my iBook sit for awhile with no battery and no AC power to see if that cures it.

I don't think that will fix it for you. From what I understand the process has you zero out the graphic-options property (the "00000000" value) and save it back to Open Firmware, which I'm further guessing is a flash-ROM kinda thing. I may be completely off base here... someone set me straight.

Anyhow, if I'm correct, if someone with an unmodified iBook (same model as yours) could boot into open firmware and read that property value, you could restore it. If the only problem with your iBook is the video you may still be able to boot into open firmware and type into the keyboard. Actually - you could verify that now. Boot into open firmware (hold down the keys a bit longer to verify it gets there) and then type "shut-down" then enter. (no quotes). If the machine shuts off, you have access to open firmware. Good luck.

[Edit: If the "shut-down" trick above confirms you can still access open firmware, you can reset NVRAM as described by Apple kbase article #42642:

0 > reset-nvram
Press Return
0 > reset-all
Press Return

flatcatch · Oct 24, 2002, 01:23 AM

** Hey mods - can you merge threads with vBullitin? It'd be nice to merge this iBook spanning thread with the other... I'm sure this will be a continued hot item and it'd be nice to consolidate all tips/tricks/experiences.

theJeff · Oct 24, 2002, 02:34 PM

I've tried the typing blind in Open Firmware thing. Did not help.

Some Guy [] · Oct 25, 2002, 12:52 PM

so i did this on my ibook/700/12.1" and now the 'display' system prefs actually sees 2 displays but i can't seem to disable 'mirror mode' or make the resolution on the external display any higher then 1024x768.

any ideas what i can do?

thanks,
-justin

czern0b0g · Oct 29, 2002, 01:07 PM

justin,

in the displays prefs, you should be able to uncheck the "mirror displays" (or something like that) option and then the screens in the "arrange" tab will no longer overlap, but will be side by side which is what you want.

if this option is unavailable, you may have typed in the hack incorrectly, which if you still booted fine, may not have done anything at all and luckily nothing harmful.

i would recommend trying the temporary hack first, simply because i have a profound respect for open firmware's mystifying and destructive capabilities.

Taco · Oct 29, 2002, 05:08 PM

The firmware settings for the pismo must be the way to get spanning on the rage 128 ibooks. Can anyone with a Pismo post the firmware settings to be compared with the ibooks settings. Is the video card in the ibook in fact the same video card in the pismo?

Matt Brinkhoff · Oct 29, 2002, 05:14 PM

Worked great on my 700MHz iBook w/ Radeon. One caveat, though - if you are going to re-set the open firmware and go back to the 'old way' make sure that your external display isn't set to something that the built-in LCD wouldn't normally be able to hack. I had my external set to 1280x1024 and when I rebooted after re-setting the open firmware both displays were mirroring the same screwed-up image. (Almost as if the display had 'wrapped around' on itself.) I was able to change it to 1024x768 but if I rebooted with the external monitor plugged in it always reverted to trying to show the higher rez.

I fixed it by re-doing the OF update and then setting both displays to the same resolution. No permanent damage - just a minor annoyance.

Some Guy [] · Oct 30, 2002, 02:57 AM

yep, looks like i forgot the space in " /", i typed it in correctly and it now works fine. I can now see the 'arrangement' tab in the display prefs and disable mirroring as well as use any resolution i want on the external one.

make sure you guys enable the QE hack so you can still have QE enabled with a 2nd display, it speeds things up a lot!